A Nantucket Wedding(82)

“Of course.” Jane bit her lip. “I hope they’ll let me see him.”

“Oh, they’re very nice at the hospital,” the driver assured her.

Jane paid the driver with her colorful new pounds and stepped out of the taxi. In front of her was a long, low building, with ambulances parked in bays nearby and a brightly lit room showing through wide glass double doors. The sign overhead said, MYNEDFA BRYS. Helpfully, it also said, EMERGENCY ENTRANCE.

Inside, she found an enclosed cubicle with two women chatting away in what sounded like Martian. As soon as she approached them, they became professional.

“Hello. How may we help you?”

Jane almost asked them why they assumed she wasn’t Welsh, but then she realized she was dragging a rolling suitcase behind her.

“My husband is here, I think. He had a fall on Mount Snowdon earlier today. Or maybe it was yesterday. I mean, the time changes are making my brain fuzzy—” Now that she was here, actually in the Bangor, Wales, hospital, her body was acting crazy, shaking and trembling, and her mind wouldn’t work.

“What is his name, please, dear?” The nurse was young, with bright brown eyes and creamy skin.

“Scott Hudson.”

“Ah, yes. He has a broken arm.”

“Can I see him?”

“Surely. Come along.” The nurse stepped out of the small windowed office, gave Jane a smile—didn’t that mean he was all right?—and led Jane down a hallway, into an elevator, off at another floor, and down a hallway until she came to a room with an open door and a beeping machine and a figure lying very still on a hospital bed.

    “Should I wake him?”

“Go on, dear. He’ll be a bit groggy, you know, he’s got a small morphine drip for the pain.”

“The pain!”

“It’s all right. He’ll be glad to see you.”

Jane leaned her suitcase against the wall and quietly approached the bed. There Scott was. Lying so still beneath the snow white sheet and blanket. His eyes were closed. Already he had a dark shadow of beard along his jaw. An IV stand stood next to him, and a liquid dripped slowly into a vein in his arm. Her strong, powerful, sturdy Scott, lying in a hospital bed, with his left arm encased in a plaster cast and a needle in his right arm!

“Look at his fingers, Mrs. Hudson.” The nurse read a chart from the end of the bed, then moved close to Jane, as if to share her strength. “His fingers are pink. That means his circulation is fine. He’ll probably be released tomorrow.”

Jane swallowed her tears and came close to the bed. She took his good hand in hers, bent close to him, and said softly, “Scott? Scott. It’s Jane. I’m here.”

Scott’s eyes opened. His utterly gorgeous hazel eyes. For a moment, he seemed to be orienting himself. After a minute, he said, “Jane.”

Jane burst into tears.

“Hey,” Scott said and tugged on her hand.

She leaned over and kissed him. She ran her hands over his face. “Oh, Scott, you’re alive, you’re here, you’re okay.”

“I know. I’m luckier than I deserve to be. I was an idiot…”

“No, anyone can fall. I read the comments on the Internet on the way over. No one can judge when the mist will come in. Tell me about your arm. Does it hurt?”

A weak smile. “Not now. I’m pumped full of drugs. It hurt like the devil when I fell.”

    “How did it happen? Tell me. Wait, can I sit on the bed or should I get a chair?”

She looked around. The nurse had quietly disappeared.

“Sit on the bed. This side.”

Jane hitched herself up on the bed, and Scott kept hold of her hand.

“Tell me.”

“It’s not dramatic. It’s ridiculously simple. I’d hiked up the Crib Goch path and I was beginning along the ridge. They call it a scramble there, because you need your hands. I was exhilarated, energized, I was so close, the air was sweet and pure—I thought I could run the rest of the way. It’s magic up there, Jane. I want to climb Mount Snowdon with you sometime, not now, and not the path I took.”

“How did you fall?”

Scott’s eyes were bright. “Suddenly this thick white mist rolled in from nowhere and the temperature dropped. I took my sweatshirt out of my backpack and pulled it on over my head and that movement unbalanced me. My foot slipped. Down I went.”

“Were you terrified?”

“I didn’t have time to be scared. It happened so fast. It happened like this”—Scott snapped his fingers—“unimaginably quickly. I was sliding, almost rolling, and I reached out my arm to stop myself, and I knocked into a sharp edge of slate—it’s slate everywhere up there. I hit the slate, and my body came down on top of my arm at the same time. I heard the bone crack. It hurt, but not as much as it did when I found myself lodged between two boulders.”

“Scott, how frightening!”

“The fall was frightening. I felt better, safer, when I was stopped by the boulders. I could have fallen to my death from up there. People have. I was thankful to be stopped. I caught my breath. I went for my cellphone, but it had fallen out of the backpack when I got out my sweatshirt. The mist was still all around. I took off my backpack—that’s when I knew for sure I’d broken my arm. The pain was red hot. I couldn’t use it. I cursed and somehow wrestled my backpack off with one hand. I got out my wool hat and put it on. I drank some water. I had trail mix if I got hungry, but I wasn’t hungry. I huddled tight, trying to keep warm, but my arm hurt like shit and was kind of dangling, flopping. I had a flannel shirt in my backpack, I was wearing my T-shirt and had been warm enough in that because I was moving. I made a kind of sling, tying the sleeves together in front—I had to use my left hand, the hand attached to the broken arm, and that was a pain, I can tell you. But I got my arm more or less immobilized against my chest.”